Newly manufactured money has to go somewhere: New record $66.3m for indifferent abstract art

Newly manufactured money has to go somewhere: New record $66.3m for indifferent abstract art, by Deutsche Welle.

A large painting by Willem de Kooning fetched over $66 million at an auction in New York, setting a new record for the expressionist artist.

De Kooning's "Untitled XXV"

De Kooning’s piece is rather lazily called “Untitled XXV”.

We can be pretty sure that the person who bought this came by their US$66m easily, perhaps by asset speculation or a very inflated management position, but not by a regular job. Heck, maybe they subconsciously felt undeserving and threw the money away?

We know this is a much better painting, because it fetched $81.4 million on Wednesday after a 14-minute bidding war:

Monet Grainstack

By Claude Monet. This is one of tens of paintings of grainstacks by Monet.

The Monet, which was estimated to sell at $45 million, last appeared at auction in 1999, when it sold for $12 million.